Mr. Breathmask

Welcome to the boards!
The answer to your question is quite simple. After recording the film's score, someone decided to use the concert version of The Imperial March for this scene, replacing the original version that was written to picture (which you can find on the expanded release in the track The Imperial Probe/Aboard the Executor). The concert version opens disc 2 of the expanded soundtrack release and was first featured on the original soundtrack release back in 1980. It's basically the same stock version you've been hearing for the past 35 years.
It's but one example of many dropped or replaced cues in The Empire Strikes Back.

Superman Returns
John Ottman does a decent job of updating the superhero sound for the '00's, but the score seems to be loud all the time. Even the "quieter" parts are backed by a huge choir. It's decent music, but its lack of variation in scope makes it all sound a bit same-y.

I agree. and in the second film it is once again the Earth scenes which are the most fun. It's a pity that most of the film doesnt take place there.

If you're curious to see what this music goes with, your wait will soon be over!
On May 9th, the first part of District 24 will be available for viewing on Vimeo.
Volume 2 will be released on May 16th.

I've been rewatching the series over the past few months. I'm halfway through season six and it's great. There's not a bad episode to be found in season 5 and 6. Absolute classics.

Hello everyone!
I'm the guy behind http://musicofmiddleearth.com/ and after lurking here for some time, this might be a good moment for my first post.
Glad to hear you find the application interesting!
Maybe a few words on the project:
I created the app mainly for myself, because I found it very inconvenient to listen to existing theme lists using only a music player like iTunes.
Releasing the app online was more of an afterthought; it isn't very professional and I only work on it as a hobby.
I used http://www.melson.nl/lotr/ as a base but made my own changes. Some tracks were very incomplete and I had to adjust many of the timings by a few seconds to have consistent timings in the app.
I also made heavy use of Doug's book of course and tried to include all of his mentioned theme occurrences.
I'm not really musically educated, so I'm probably not the most qualified person to do something like this.
There are probably many mistakes throughout the list but of course, everything can be discussed and I would gladly make corrections and release updates in the future to make this better!
(Some things are still very imprecise. For example, the whole 'Moria' track is only listed as a variation of the 'Moria' theme and the themes 'Riders of Rohan' and 'Shelob' are missing completely.)
The iOS version is currently one update behind the desktop version and the online list, which is why 4:18 - 4:26 in the Prologue is not the same in the two versions. (I'll try to update this as soon as possible.)
As some of you already mentioned in the meantime, 'Rivendell' and 'Weakness & Redemption' are very closely related. (See Doug's book for his explanation about 'W&R' and its connection to 'Rivendell' and 'The Pity of Gollum'.)
http://www.melson.nl/lotr/ has it listed as 'Rivendell', but to be fair, there is no 'W&R' at all in that list...
I later changed it to 'W&R' simply because this is how it's listed in Doug's book and I don't see a direct connection to Rivendell in the film. (Isildur with the ring, Galadriel talking: "... but the hearts of men are easily corrupted. And the ring of power has a will of its own.")
Concerning 'The Hobbit':
I would really like to include it as some point in the future. It just wasn't a priority for now and I'm not sure how to do it properly.
Ultimately I want this to be as complete as possible and consistent to Doug's book.
I also don't think that I could create a list by myself. For now I always refer to this excellent list in this forum: http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23907.
(This is actually the reason why I found this forum in the first place.)
I could of course include this list in the application for now (only if it's fine with Jason LeBlanc obviously) and make changes in the future as we learn more about 'The Music of The Hobbit'.
As I mentioned above, I'm always open for suggestions!
Greetings from Switzerland!

They completely removed the Dobby subplot!

I saw The Battle of the Five Armies yesterday in IMAX 3D HFR. Now, after three movies spread over two years, does the trilogy's finale make it all worth it?
Well...
No.
The Battle of the Five Armies was another reminder of how much of a masterpiece the Lord of the Rings trilogy is. The Hobbit is grand and spectacular, but lacks the heart, the passion and the magic of its predecessor.
This third film is another example of these symptoms. The grand vistas of the battle are spectacular, but when the only characters we've spent more than half a movie with (i.e. Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves) are sidelined during almost all of it, it's hard to care. We only met Bard halfway through film two and why the hell should I care about Dain? He just showed up five minutes ago.
When the dwarves finally do storm out, the epicness is pumped to eleven, even though they're really only thirteen additional warriors against an army of thousands. Like so much in this trilogy, it rings hollow. A lot of hot air.
The Battle of the Five Armies fails to pay off many things that were set up in the first two films. The Elven jewels are in there for two minutes then are never mentioned again. There's no real goodbye to the fallen (why the hell didn't Thorin get a proper funeral scene?!) and what was the point of showing us the windlance in DoS if you're not going to use it here? Lame.
Many of the filmmaker's inventions for the first two films backfire here. Bard's family becomes dead weight, keeping him out of a lot of the action and adding very little to the plot. Their worst offense though, is Alfrid. I liked him and the master in DoS, but before the master's early demise, we're told about five times they're both dicks. Yes, yes, I get it. When Alfrid survived the attack on Lake-Town and came ashore, I felt he might be given the chance to redeem himself, but every scene with him revolved around him being an irredeemable scumbag. There was no reason to laugh at his supposed comic relief and every time he showed up, he violently yanked me out of enjoying the movie. He ended up exiting the film looking like a Monty Python character (seriously, Terry Jones in Life of Brian, anyone?).
Technology also got in the way of enjoying the film. Apart from the movie being too CGI-invested to carry any threat or weight, the HFR was not kind on many scenes. It took a while to get used to it, more than with the previous film (partly because of the wild opening - DoS's two-people-sitting-at-a-table opening scene allowed the viewer to get used to the high frame rate). At times, the movie looked like it was being played on a flatscreen set to demo mode at your local rubbish electronics dealer. The IMAX format is also pretty ruthless. When Dwalin confronts Thorin, there were actually some prosthetics edges visible.
This movie wasn't without its good moments, but my favorite bits were actually when Jackson kept it relatively small. And they nearly all involved Bilbo. The conversation between Bilbo and Balin about the Arkenstone (btw, did that really end up in Bard's jacket pocket only to never be heard of again?), Bilbo using the Arkenstone as a bargaining chip and Bilbo throwing rocks at onstorming Orcs (much like Merry and Pippin would do in The Lord of the Rings). Most of the other parts of the movies were either layed on way too thick or kept telling us the same thing over and over again (Alfrid is a dick, Thorin is going crazy, Bard cares for his family, oh, and Alfrid is a dick).
The Hobbit is a brave attempt to adapt a book that is possibly harder to film than The Lord of the Rings. For being such a long novel, at least LotR has a clear narrative and interesting characters. The Hobbit's source material is overpopulated with identical characters all wanting the same thing, making them terribly redundant. What you might get away with on the page never really worked in the film and the large Dwarf troup ultimately became part of the films' undoing. You never really connect with any of these people. This problem was never solved in the adaptation, but instead was covered up with a lot of other things (The White Council, Sauron's involvement, Tauriel and Legolas, etc.) that only caused more problems of their own.
While I commend the craftmanship and effort put into these films and while a lot of what happens here is a technological marvel, it's hard to connect with on an emotional level. The Hobbit trilogy is the perfect example of a movie made with too much money and too much certainty of success. I strongly believe the best movies are made under a constant fear of the film being a terrible disaster. This was never an issue with The Hobbit. It was going to be a succes no matter what. I'm sure the people involved did their very best to make these films the best they could, but you never get a sense that something was driving them to make it great, like you get with Lord of the Rings. Those movies did indeed end up great. Unfortunately, with The Hobbit we'll have to settle for just good enough.

I saw The Battle of the Five Armies yesterday in IMAX 3D HFR. Now, after three movies spread over two years, does the trilogy's finale make it all worth it?
Well...
No.
The Battle of the Five Armies was another reminder of how much of a masterpiece the Lord of the Rings trilogy is. The Hobbit is grand and spectacular, but lacks the heart, the passion and the magic of its predecessor.
This third film is another example of these symptoms. The grand vistas of the battle are spectacular, but when the only characters we've spent more than half a movie with (i.e. Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves) are sidelined during almost all of it, it's hard to care. We only met Bard halfway through film two and why the hell should I care about Dain? He just showed up five minutes ago.
When the dwarves finally do storm out, the epicness is pumped to eleven, even though they're really only thirteen additional warriors against an army of thousands. Like so much in this trilogy, it rings hollow. A lot of hot air.
The Battle of the Five Armies fails to pay off many things that were set up in the first two films. The Elven jewels are in there for two minutes then are never mentioned again. There's no real goodbye to the fallen (why the hell didn't Thorin get a proper funeral scene?!) and what was the point of showing us the windlance in DoS if you're not going to use it here? Lame.
Many of the filmmaker's inventions for the first two films backfire here. Bard's family becomes dead weight, keeping him out of a lot of the action and adding very little to the plot. Their worst offense though, is Alfrid. I liked him and the master in DoS, but before the master's early demise, we're told about five times they're both dicks. Yes, yes, I get it. When Alfrid survived the attack on Lake-Town and came ashore, I felt he might be given the chance to redeem himself, but every scene with him revolved around him being an irredeemable scumbag. There was no reason to laugh at his supposed comic relief and every time he showed up, he violently yanked me out of enjoying the movie. He ended up exiting the film looking like a Monty Python character (seriously, Terry Jones in Life of Brian, anyone?).
Technology also got in the way of enjoying the film. Apart from the movie being too CGI-invested to carry any threat or weight, the HFR was not kind on many scenes. It took a while to get used to it, more than with the previous film (partly because of the wild opening - DoS's two-people-sitting-at-a-table opening scene allowed the viewer to get used to the high frame rate). At times, the movie looked like it was being played on a flatscreen set to demo mode at your local rubbish electronics dealer. The IMAX format is also pretty ruthless. When Dwalin confronts Thorin, there were actually some prosthetics edges visible.
This movie wasn't without its good moments, but my favorite bits were actually when Jackson kept it relatively small. And they nearly all involved Bilbo. The conversation between Bilbo and Balin about the Arkenstone (btw, did that really end up in Bard's jacket pocket only to never be heard of again?), Bilbo using the Arkenstone as a bargaining chip and Bilbo throwing rocks at onstorming Orcs (much like Merry and Pippin would do in The Lord of the Rings). Most of the other parts of the movies were either layed on way too thick or kept telling us the same thing over and over again (Alfrid is a dick, Thorin is going crazy, Bard cares for his family, oh, and Alfrid is a dick).
The Hobbit is a brave attempt to adapt a book that is possibly harder to film than The Lord of the Rings. For being such a long novel, at least LotR has a clear narrative and interesting characters. The Hobbit's source material is overpopulated with identical characters all wanting the same thing, making them terribly redundant. What you might get away with on the page never really worked in the film and the large Dwarf troup ultimately became part of the films' undoing. You never really connect with any of these people. This problem was never solved in the adaptation, but instead was covered up with a lot of other things (The White Council, Sauron's involvement, Tauriel and Legolas, etc.) that only caused more problems of their own.
While I commend the craftmanship and effort put into these films and while a lot of what happens here is a technological marvel, it's hard to connect with on an emotional level. The Hobbit trilogy is the perfect example of a movie made with too much money and too much certainty of success. I strongly believe the best movies are made under a constant fear of the film being a terrible disaster. This was never an issue with The Hobbit. It was going to be a succes no matter what. I'm sure the people involved did their very best to make these films the best they could, but you never get a sense that something was driving them to make it great, like you get with Lord of the Rings. Those movies did indeed end up great. Unfortunately, with The Hobbit we'll have to settle for just good enough.

A blind gimp troll with battle prosthetics, mind you. It was the Middle-Earth version of a battle cyborg!

I saw The Battle of the Five Armies yesterday in IMAX 3D HFR. Now, after three movies spread over two years, does the trilogy's finale make it all worth it?
Well...
No.
The Battle of the Five Armies was another reminder of how much of a masterpiece the Lord of the Rings trilogy is. The Hobbit is grand and spectacular, but lacks the heart, the passion and the magic of its predecessor.
This third film is another example of these symptoms. The grand vistas of the battle are spectacular, but when the only characters we've spent more than half a movie with (i.e. Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves) are sidelined during almost all of it, it's hard to care. We only met Bard halfway through film two and why the hell should I care about Dain? He just showed up five minutes ago.
When the dwarves finally do storm out, the epicness is pumped to eleven, even though they're really only thirteen additional warriors against an army of thousands. Like so much in this trilogy, it rings hollow. A lot of hot air.
The Battle of the Five Armies fails to pay off many things that were set up in the first two films. The Elven jewels are in there for two minutes then are never mentioned again. There's no real goodbye to the fallen (why the hell didn't Thorin get a proper funeral scene?!) and what was the point of showing us the windlance in DoS if you're not going to use it here? Lame.
Many of the filmmaker's inventions for the first two films backfire here. Bard's family becomes dead weight, keeping him out of a lot of the action and adding very little to the plot. Their worst offense though, is Alfrid. I liked him and the master in DoS, but before the master's early demise, we're told about five times they're both dicks. Yes, yes, I get it. When Alfrid survived the attack on Lake-Town and came ashore, I felt he might be given the chance to redeem himself, but every scene with him revolved around him being an irredeemable scumbag. There was no reason to laugh at his supposed comic relief and every time he showed up, he violently yanked me out of enjoying the movie. He ended up exiting the film looking like a Monty Python character (seriously, Terry Jones in Life of Brian, anyone?).
Technology also got in the way of enjoying the film. Apart from the movie being too CGI-invested to carry any threat or weight, the HFR was not kind on many scenes. It took a while to get used to it, more than with the previous film (partly because of the wild opening - DoS's two-people-sitting-at-a-table opening scene allowed the viewer to get used to the high frame rate). At times, the movie looked like it was being played on a flatscreen set to demo mode at your local rubbish electronics dealer. The IMAX format is also pretty ruthless. When Dwalin confronts Thorin, there were actually some prosthetics edges visible.
This movie wasn't without its good moments, but my favorite bits were actually when Jackson kept it relatively small. And they nearly all involved Bilbo. The conversation between Bilbo and Balin about the Arkenstone (btw, did that really end up in Bard's jacket pocket only to never be heard of again?), Bilbo using the Arkenstone as a bargaining chip and Bilbo throwing rocks at onstorming Orcs (much like Merry and Pippin would do in The Lord of the Rings). Most of the other parts of the movies were either layed on way too thick or kept telling us the same thing over and over again (Alfrid is a dick, Thorin is going crazy, Bard cares for his family, oh, and Alfrid is a dick).
The Hobbit is a brave attempt to adapt a book that is possibly harder to film than The Lord of the Rings. For being such a long novel, at least LotR has a clear narrative and interesting characters. The Hobbit's source material is overpopulated with identical characters all wanting the same thing, making them terribly redundant. What you might get away with on the page never really worked in the film and the large Dwarf troup ultimately became part of the films' undoing. You never really connect with any of these people. This problem was never solved in the adaptation, but instead was covered up with a lot of other things (The White Council, Sauron's involvement, Tauriel and Legolas, etc.) that only caused more problems of their own.
While I commend the craftmanship and effort put into these films and while a lot of what happens here is a technological marvel, it's hard to connect with on an emotional level. The Hobbit trilogy is the perfect example of a movie made with too much money and too much certainty of success. I strongly believe the best movies are made under a constant fear of the film being a terrible disaster. This was never an issue with The Hobbit. It was going to be a succes no matter what. I'm sure the people involved did their very best to make these films the best they could, but you never get a sense that something was driving them to make it great, like you get with Lord of the Rings. Those movies did indeed end up great. Unfortunately, with The Hobbit we'll have to settle for just good enough.

If John Williams had written The Lord of the Rings, it would have been a John Williams score.
To me, the music Howard Shore wrote was a Lord of the Rings score.

If John Williams had written The Lord of the Rings, it would have been a John Williams score.
To me, the music Howard Shore wrote was a Lord of the Rings score.

If John Williams had written The Lord of the Rings, it would have been a John Williams score.
To me, the music Howard Shore wrote was a Lord of the Rings score.

Criterion discriminates against my region. I'll have to wait for an Amazon or SAE sale.

With the 10th anniversary of the show's premiere, I intend to start a rewatch on Blu in a few weeks.

Fuck, no!

Our soundtrack has been released. Hurray!
And just for you JWFanners, here's an English translation of our track list:
1. The Netherlands, 2039 A.D. (3:41)
2. Hope (1:28)
3. Do you know who I am? (2:11)
4. District 24, vol. 2 (0:34)
5. Checkmate (3:06)
6. Banished (2:17)
7. Dead (0:53)
8. Finale (1:29)
You can support us and Thomas by purchasing the album on iTunes or listen to it on Spotify.
Enjoy!

Blackwater. This is a television show? Really? The sheer size of this episode is something to marvel at. It turned me from a casual viewer into a committed fan of the series.

UPDATE: Our soundtrack is now available for download! Find us on Spotify or support us by purchasing the score on iTunes!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/schoonmaakster-original-sound/id894566875?uo=4' target="itunes_store" style="display:inline-block;overflow:hidden;background:url(https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.png) no-repeat;width:110px;height:40px;@media only screen{background-image:url(https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.svg);}">

A bit of history:

About a year ago, me and my girlfriend Evelien had a crazy idea: use the minor program of our study in Media, Information and Communication to spend five months on making a movie. Full-time. The project was to be a collection of three or four small shorts, each helmed by a different director, combining together into one short film. Think Four Rooms, only with a total running time of about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

As we started, we were tasked with finding our core team. Evelien was set to write the screenplay to the entire film. She would also direct one sequence. I would take on another. We were looking for one or two more directors as well as a good executive producer.

As it turned out, few students were willing to take the full-time plunge with us. Understandable in some cases; some students had already chosen other avenues for their minor program. Unable to find directors, we shifted gears and divided elements of the film (which was growing into a more coherent story, rather than a collection of sequences, by the day) between the two of us. Once we finally found a willing producer and handed in our plans at school, we were told only two out of the three of us could proceed. Our newly found partner in crime was lacking the points to start her minor program.

Over the summer break, we soldiered on and rewrote the screenplay into something that would excite us. The story became a single story with a beginning, a middle, an end and a wealth of backstory. And before we knew it, we had a two-part action thriller set a little over thirty years into the future.

De Schoonmaakster (which translates literally into The Cleaning Lady in English; the official English title will be District 24), takes us to a world different from the world we know today. By the time we enter the story in the year 2039, the power to rule The Netherlands has been redistributed and the country has been divided into many small districts that have been closed off from the outside world. When we jump forward to 2045, another upheaval has taken place and the former heir apparent of District 24’s leadership returns to reclaim her throne by both stealth and force.

Armed with a finished script, we were ready to go. Flash-forward past five very intense months of production to the beginning of 2014, and the movie has been shot, edited and completed. It was quite an undertaking to make a twenty-minute picture on a shoestring budget, but thanks to the help of a lot of very willing people, we were able to deliver a finished product that we’re quite happy with.

One of the best experiences was working with our composer, Thomas Muis, who was involved in the production from about a month before we started shooting. It was the first time either me or Evelien had worked with a composer on a film (this was my fourth short film as a director, while it was her first). Like all aspects of filmmaking, it’s something that requires a lot of communication and sometimes you have to be very precise. Even after you’ve reached picture lock, finished your effect shots, graded the film and are nearly done with the film’s sound design, a wrong musical turn can still tremendously fuck up your movie. Likewise, hitting the right notes can make your film come to life more than it ever did. It’s something we’re probably all aware of on this forum, but it’s something else entirely to experience it firsthand and discover the work and considerations that go into deciding a score’s tone, spotting a film and finding its proper sync points.

In the end, we went for a score that underlines the emotion rather than the action and adds a sense of gravitas to the proceedings. We are very proud of the result and have decided to cooperate with Thomas in releasing the music as a digital album. On June 6th, the music will be available for download through iTunes, Spotify, Amazon MP3, Google Play and several other services! There's about fifteen minutes of score and we'll have a finished track list soon. In the meantime, here's a nice little bit of cover art.
 



When the movie will be released is currently unclear. We were hoping to release the film online this summer, but are also eyeing several festivals around the world. Some of these require our film to be submitted as a worldwide or regional premiere, so we have to sit on the movie for now while we submit to various festivals.

In the meantime, you can view our teaser trailer below. The music is taken from our own original score.
 



Cheers,

- Marc

UPDATE: Our soundtrack is now available for download! Find us on Spotify or support us by purchasing the score on iTunes!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/schoonmaakster-original-sound/id894566875?uo=4' target="itunes_store" style="display:inline-block;overflow:hidden;background:url(https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.png) no-repeat;width:110px;height:40px;@media only screen{background-image:url(https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.svg);}">

A bit of history:

About a year ago, me and my girlfriend Evelien had a crazy idea: use the minor program of our study in Media, Information and Communication to spend five months on making a movie. Full-time. The project was to be a collection of three or four small shorts, each helmed by a different director, combining together into one short film. Think Four Rooms, only with a total running time of about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

As we started, we were tasked with finding our core team. Evelien was set to write the screenplay to the entire film. She would also direct one sequence. I would take on another. We were looking for one or two more directors as well as a good executive producer.

As it turned out, few students were willing to take the full-time plunge with us. Understandable in some cases; some students had already chosen other avenues for their minor program. Unable to find directors, we shifted gears and divided elements of the film (which was growing into a more coherent story, rather than a collection of sequences, by the day) between the two of us. Once we finally found a willing producer and handed in our plans at school, we were told only two out of the three of us could proceed. Our newly found partner in crime was lacking the points to start her minor program.

Over the summer break, we soldiered on and rewrote the screenplay into something that would excite us. The story became a single story with a beginning, a middle, an end and a wealth of backstory. And before we knew it, we had a two-part action thriller set a little over thirty years into the future.

De Schoonmaakster (which translates literally into The Cleaning Lady in English; the official English title will be District 24), takes us to a world different from the world we know today. By the time we enter the story in the year 2039, the power to rule The Netherlands has been redistributed and the country has been divided into many small districts that have been closed off from the outside world. When we jump forward to 2045, another upheaval has taken place and the former heir apparent of District 24’s leadership returns to reclaim her throne by both stealth and force.

Armed with a finished script, we were ready to go. Flash-forward past five very intense months of production to the beginning of 2014, and the movie has been shot, edited and completed. It was quite an undertaking to make a twenty-minute picture on a shoestring budget, but thanks to the help of a lot of very willing people, we were able to deliver a finished product that we’re quite happy with.

One of the best experiences was working with our composer, Thomas Muis, who was involved in the production from about a month before we started shooting. It was the first time either me or Evelien had worked with a composer on a film (this was my fourth short film as a director, while it was her first). Like all aspects of filmmaking, it’s something that requires a lot of communication and sometimes you have to be very precise. Even after you’ve reached picture lock, finished your effect shots, graded the film and are nearly done with the film’s sound design, a wrong musical turn can still tremendously fuck up your movie. Likewise, hitting the right notes can make your film come to life more than it ever did. It’s something we’re probably all aware of on this forum, but it’s something else entirely to experience it firsthand and discover the work and considerations that go into deciding a score’s tone, spotting a film and finding its proper sync points.

In the end, we went for a score that underlines the emotion rather than the action and adds a sense of gravitas to the proceedings. We are very proud of the result and have decided to cooperate with Thomas in releasing the music as a digital album. On June 6th, the music will be available for download through iTunes, Spotify, Amazon MP3, Google Play and several other services! There's about fifteen minutes of score and we'll have a finished track list soon. In the meantime, here's a nice little bit of cover art.
 



When the movie will be released is currently unclear. We were hoping to release the film online this summer, but are also eyeing several festivals around the world. Some of these require our film to be submitted as a worldwide or regional premiere, so we have to sit on the movie for now while we submit to various festivals.

In the meantime, you can view our teaser trailer below. The music is taken from our own original score.
 



Cheers,

- Marc

UPDATE: Our soundtrack is now available for download! Find us on Spotify or support us by purchasing the score on iTunes!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/schoonmaakster-original-sound/id894566875?uo=4' target="itunes_store" style="display:inline-block;overflow:hidden;background:url(https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.png) no-repeat;width:110px;height:40px;@media only screen{background-image:url(https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.svg);}">

A bit of history:

About a year ago, me and my girlfriend Evelien had a crazy idea: use the minor program of our study in Media, Information and Communication to spend five months on making a movie. Full-time. The project was to be a collection of three or four small shorts, each helmed by a different director, combining together into one short film. Think Four Rooms, only with a total running time of about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

As we started, we were tasked with finding our core team. Evelien was set to write the screenplay to the entire film. She would also direct one sequence. I would take on another. We were looking for one or two more directors as well as a good executive producer.

As it turned out, few students were willing to take the full-time plunge with us. Understandable in some cases; some students had already chosen other avenues for their minor program. Unable to find directors, we shifted gears and divided elements of the film (which was growing into a more coherent story, rather than a collection of sequences, by the day) between the two of us. Once we finally found a willing producer and handed in our plans at school, we were told only two out of the three of us could proceed. Our newly found partner in crime was lacking the points to start her minor program.

Over the summer break, we soldiered on and rewrote the screenplay into something that would excite us. The story became a single story with a beginning, a middle, an end and a wealth of backstory. And before we knew it, we had a two-part action thriller set a little over thirty years into the future.

De Schoonmaakster (which translates literally into The Cleaning Lady in English; the official English title will be District 24), takes us to a world different from the world we know today. By the time we enter the story in the year 2039, the power to rule The Netherlands has been redistributed and the country has been divided into many small districts that have been closed off from the outside world. When we jump forward to 2045, another upheaval has taken place and the former heir apparent of District 24’s leadership returns to reclaim her throne by both stealth and force.

Armed with a finished script, we were ready to go. Flash-forward past five very intense months of production to the beginning of 2014, and the movie has been shot, edited and completed. It was quite an undertaking to make a twenty-minute picture on a shoestring budget, but thanks to the help of a lot of very willing people, we were able to deliver a finished product that we’re quite happy with.

One of the best experiences was working with our composer, Thomas Muis, who was involved in the production from about a month before we started shooting. It was the first time either me or Evelien had worked with a composer on a film (this was my fourth short film as a director, while it was her first). Like all aspects of filmmaking, it’s something that requires a lot of communication and sometimes you have to be very precise. Even after you’ve reached picture lock, finished your effect shots, graded the film and are nearly done with the film’s sound design, a wrong musical turn can still tremendously fuck up your movie. Likewise, hitting the right notes can make your film come to life more than it ever did. It’s something we’re probably all aware of on this forum, but it’s something else entirely to experience it firsthand and discover the work and considerations that go into deciding a score’s tone, spotting a film and finding its proper sync points.

In the end, we went for a score that underlines the emotion rather than the action and adds a sense of gravitas to the proceedings. We are very proud of the result and have decided to cooperate with Thomas in releasing the music as a digital album. On June 6th, the music will be available for download through iTunes, Spotify, Amazon MP3, Google Play and several other services! There's about fifteen minutes of score and we'll have a finished track list soon. In the meantime, here's a nice little bit of cover art.
 



When the movie will be released is currently unclear. We were hoping to release the film online this summer, but are also eyeing several festivals around the world. Some of these require our film to be submitted as a worldwide or regional premiere, so we have to sit on the movie for now while we submit to various festivals.

In the meantime, you can view our teaser trailer below. The music is taken from our own original score.
 



Cheers,

- Marc

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
A much lighter read than I had expected. Good fun and pretty tense at some points. I've already started The Sign of the Four, which features Sherlock Holmes injecting cocaine into his arm on the very first page. Fun!

Which is how my copy of AUJ got to have a tear in its front cover... ):<

Back to the Future
Logic gaps or not, this is one of those movies that comes close to perfection. Love it.